The present invention relates to a roll transfer robot for transferring a roll of ribbon material. More specifically the present invention concerns a robot capable of removing a roll of ribbon material from a conveyor means and placing that roll of ribbon material onto a chuck of a ribbon payoff assembly with lead end located and rotated to a predetermined position.
In the area of providing continuous ribbon material to a process use it has been known to unwind a reel of material and to join the end of one roll of material to the next roll of material such that a continuous supply of ribbon is provided to the end use. Such previous systems have included mounting multiple rolls adjacent one another and upon a depletion of one roll manually mounting another roll.
The herein described apparatus and method is concerned with a ribbon payoff assembly capable of unwinding one roll at a time and a robot capable of replacing that roll as soon as it is unwound. The robot acts to transfer a roll of material from a conveyor assembly having a multiplicity of rolls of material thereon to a payoff assembly. The entire paper or ribbon supply system is designed to operate at very high speeds such that a new roll is required every four to nine minutes. The robot assembly is designed to supply a roll to the payoff assembly within this time interval. Hence, by utilizing this assembly it is not necessary to have a full time attendant for loading paper rolls onto the payoff assembly.